Memory devices are used in a variety of electronic applications, such as personal computers, cell phones, digital cameras, and other electronic equipment. Memory devices are typically fabricated by sequentially depositing insulating or dielectric layers, conductive layers, and semiconductive layers of material over a semiconductor substrate, and patterning the various material layers using lithography to form circuit components and elements thereon.
A non-volatile memory device is a memory device that will retain stored data even while power is off. The non-volatile memory device is utilized in various products and devices where power is not always available, frequently interrupted and/or low power usage is required. One type of non-volatile memory devices is a split-gate non-volatile memory device. In the split-gate non-volatile memory device, an over erase problem associated with stacked gate structures is eliminated by the use of a split gate structure.